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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

This portrait is part of a collection of more than 400 studio portraits of Jewish men and women taken in the city of Baia Mare (Nagybanya) between 1935 and 1940. Baia Mare is a town in Transylvania, northwestern Romania. The town was occupied by Hungary in 1940 and by Germany after March 1944. The Germans established a ghetto in the vacant lot of the Koenig Glass Factory in Baia Mare in April 1944 and deported its almost 6,000 Jewish inhabitants to Auschwitz in two transports on May 31 and June 5, 1944.

These portraits document the range of Jews who lived in the town prior to deportation. Included in the collection are many wedding and prewar family portraits. However others were probably taken for identification papers; the subjects in these photos are often not smiling and the backdrop is bare. The photographer associated the negatives with the names so that he could sell extra duplicates later, a common practice with his business. Mr. Liviu Vanau purchased the collection of glass negatives, and the Museum paid to have the original negatives digitized.https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/romania.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.